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Poor Battery Life

My 520 is around 6 months old. The battery life has always been poor (sub 10 hours) but recently its dropped to around 5-6 hours. My usual settings are Bluetooth off / 0% screen brightness (& 15 second timeout) and 3-4 sensors attached. (Radar / Power / Heart / Speed)

Today I did a 2hr:15min ride with 3 sensors (Radar/Power/Heart) no BT and 0% screen and it went from 100% to 60%...

Is the battery dying. Or is it the number of sensors running? I'm seriously considering sending it back to CRC for a warranty/replacement ...

0 Jim-A over 8 years ago

I have a similar issue and after some experimenting, it seems to be the radar light which is the culprit.

I tried various combinations of bluetooth on/off, Livetrack, speed/cadence sensor and only when I have the Varia radar active do I notice the battery life suffering badly.

Perhaps you could try disabling the radar and see if you get similar results?

0 bikejack over 8 years ago

I also noticed higher battery usage with Varia Radar and is a function of number of radar targets experienced on 520.

Worst battery usage I have seen with Varia is about 10% per hour usage with 40% background light-more traffic than usual. Varia is only sensor I am using.

0 bdizzle84 over 8 years ago

I have a similar issue and after some experimenting, it seems to be the radar light which is the culprit.

I tried various combinations of bluetooth on/off, Livetrack, speed/cadence sensor and only when I have the Varia radar active do I notice the battery life suffering badly.

Perhaps you could try disabling the radar and see if you get similar results?

I also noticed higher battery usage with Varia Radar and is a function of number of radar targets experienced on 520.

Worst battery usage I have seen with Varia is about 10% per hour usage with 40% background light-more traffic than usual. Varia is only sensor I am using.

Interesting, I did wonder if it was a specific sensor, shame it's the most useful one! I can't ride without that radar now :D I'll give it a test though, thanks guys.

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

Can the battery be changed? It doesn't have any screws to open! It's not a cheap device, you cannot just throw it away just because the battery is faulty.

0 Conza over 8 years ago

Similar

Similar issue here..

0 Jim-A over 8 years ago

Carril worcester

Can the battery be changed? It doesn't have any screws to open! It's not a cheap device, you cannot just throw it away just because the battery is faulty.

Its not the actual battery that is faulty. It seems that the Varia Radar is using an excessive amount of power on the 520 when communicating the various radar events.

0 af0002 over 8 years ago

My 520 is around 6 months old. The battery life has always been poor (sub 10 hours) but recently its dropped to around 5-6 hours. My usual settings are Bluetooth off / 0% screen brightness (& 15 second timeout) and 3-4 sensors attached. (Radar / Power / Heart / Speed)

Today I did a 2hr:15min ride with 3 sensors (Radar/Power/Heart) no BT and 0% screen and it went from 100% to 60%...

Is the battery dying. Or is it the number of sensors running? I'm seriously considering sending it back to CRC for a warranty/replacement ...

For me 1 hour of use
USES 12% of battery life

With the following:

4 month old device

80% Screen Brightness
GPS
Bluetooth
ANT HR
ANT Power
ANT Speed/Cadence

Most of the time it is not an issue, but even if I forgot to charge the device once or do a super long ride, the battery is often going below 20% remaining, and I have to disable functions (usually backlight first) in order to be able to save the entire ride.

I DO NOT HAVE A Varia Radar.

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

I use a stages power and the speed and heart rate monitor sensors seems to last ages 120-130km no problem still have 30-40% when I'm done.. I did plane a course on garmin connectand sent it to my 520,was only a 35km but following the route guidance that short ride it did chew through 40% of my battery. But that's only only time I've ever noticed extreme battery usage.

0 vestergaard.rene over 8 years ago

I've noticed that the battery-indicator scale seems to behave non-linearly at least with the most recent firmware: it depletes slower and slower as the displayed percentage drops. I've even seen the indicator staying on 2% for more than an hour.

Can anyone confirm this behaviour? Has anyone noticed this on earlier firmware versions?

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

Yes I can confirm that earlier firmware has the same battery gauge behaviour. I had one ride with the indicator at 2% for over 45 minutes or so.